Georg von Charasoff 21
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Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Egon Schiele. In addition to illustrations, literary texts,
and expressionist poetry, the journal also published political-economic essays with
a socialist/Marxist/anarchist orientation. In 1918, Pfemfert briefly supported the
‘Räte-Kommunismus’ and after the foundation of the German Communist Party
(KPD) his journal temporarily became the official party journal. Charasoff’s texts
had presumably been recommended to Pfemfert by his friend Otto Buek.
In 1921, the literary-political journal Der Gegner, which was edited by Julian
Gumperz and Wieland Herzfelde, published the article ‘Karl Marx an seine
bürgerlichen Gegner’ (Karl Marx to his bourgeois adversaries) by Georg Charasoff
(1921). This was a slightly revised version of the final chapter of Charasoff’s book
of 1909, which had been re-published also in Die Aktion (Charasoff 1920 (10): col.
634-9). The editors of Der Gegner supported the Bolshevist revolution in Russia
and published a number of articles which glorified the ‘new life’ in the Soviet
Union. Ironically, at this very time Georg Charasoff was suffering from hunger and
cold in Tbilisi, which had just been occupied by the Red Army.
12 Charasoff’s Intellectual Preoccupations in Tbilisi, Baku and
Moscow: 1917-31
In 1917, after the collapse of the Russian empire, Georgia became a part of the
‘Transcaucasian Federation’. Upon the latter’s break-up, the Democratic Republic
of Georgia was founded in May 1918 under the leadership of the Menshevik party.
In order to prevent Georgia from being occupied by the Ottoman empire, the
National Assembly signed a treaty with Germany, which recognised the newly
founded Republic and stationed troops there, in compensation for the establishment
of an anti-Bolshevist region between the Ukraine and the Caspian Sea. After
Germany’s defeat, the German troops were removed from the Caucasus and
replaced by British troops. The Mensheviks introduced a land reform, in which the
feudal landlords were expropriated (without compensation) and their land was
divided up amongst the peasant farmers as private property. Forests, mineral
deposits, the railway system and harbour installations were seized by the
government as state property. The Mensheviks also introduced a new educational
system, with Georgian as the official language in primary schools and gymnasiums
as well as in the newly founded National University in Tbilisi. In March 1921, after
the occupation of Georgia by the Red Army, the leading Social Democrats left the
country and established a government in exile in Paris, under the leadership of Noe
Zhordania. Georgia saw violent riots in August and September 1924, followed by
executions of some 4000 people.
33
Futurism, transrational poetry, and psychoanalytical interpretations of
literature
In the post-revolutionary turmoil in Russia a very interesting artistic and intellectual
life developed in Tbilisi, which was at its height after Georgia’s declaration of
independence in spring 1918:
In 1917–1921 Tbilisi actually played the same role in Caucasus as Paris in
Europe in the beginning of the century; in other words, it became the cultural
centre of Russia and Caucasus, where the elite artistic society gathered and its
accumulated artistic energy was being creatively expressed at full strength.
(Chikharadze 2009)
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22
History of Economics Review
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In 1917-18 many young poets, artists, actors, ballet-dancers and intellectuals
from Russia moved to Tbilisi, where they organised readings and discussions of
modern poetry, as well as cabaret and ballet performances in coffee-houses and
taverns. A popular place was the ‘Fantastic Little Inn’ (Fantasticheskii kabachok),
which was opened in November 1917 on the main street of the Georgian capital
and soon became a major centre of attraction for young poets and artists. The
Georgian poet G. Robakidse described it thus:
Tbilisi had become a fantastic city. This fantastic city needed a fantastic
corner and one fine day at Rustaveli Prospect No. 12, in the courtyard, poets
and artists opened The Fantastic Little Inn, which consisted of a small room
designed for 12-15 people in which by some miracle as many as 50 people
managed to fit in. The walls of the room were decorated with phantasmagoria.
The Inn was open almost every evening and writers and artists read their
poems and lectures. (Nikolskaia 1998: 167)
Georg Charasoff seems to have participated very actively in these artistic-literary
activities right from the start. Marzio Marzaduri, an Italian
expert on Russian avant-
garde literature of the early twentieth century, refers to him in the following terms:
Charazov is indeed an intellectual of great versatility: he works on
mathematics, economics, psychology and literature, also writes poetry. He
has returned to his mother country from Zurich, where he had lived for many
years, and is regarded by everyone as a sort of master [maestro]. In April
1918 he organized a conference in the ‘Fantastic Little Inn’ on The theory of
Freud and transrational language, then published in ‘Ars’ a psychoanalytical
interpretation of the dream of Tatiana, the heroine of Onegin; the first work
with a Freudian reading of a poetic text in Russia. (Marzaduri 1982: 117)
Gerald Janecek, the author of a book on Zaum: The Transrational Poetry of
Russian Futurism (1996), refers to Charasoff in the following terms:
The Tiflis mathematician and poet G. A. Kharazov was an active proponent
of Freudian psychology. Although Kharazov was apparently able to read
Freud in the original German judging by one such reference by him (1919a:
12), the main Freud texts were already available in Russian translation: The
Interpretation of Dreams in 1904, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life in
1910 and a second edition in 1916. Among the recorded contributions of
Dr Kharazov to the discussion of Freud and zaum were a lecture, ‘Freud’s
Theories and Zaum poetry’, at the Fantastic Little Inn, April 5, 1918, and his
participation in a debate ‘On Theatre and Zaum poetry’ at the Conservatory,
May 27, 1918, in which Kruchenykh also took part. (Janecek 1996: 242)
Aleksei Kruchenykh is one of the best-known Russian avant-garde and Zaum poets,
together with Jurii Degen, David Burliuk, Sergei Goredetskii and Velimir
Khlebnikov (among Georgian poets, Igor Terentyev and Ilya Zdanevich are
famously remembered). There were several literary groups in Tbilisi, named
‘Alpha-Lira’, ‘The Blue Horns’, ‘41
0
’, ‘The Guild of Poets’, ‘The Academy of
Verse’, which was founded and led by Charasoff, and the ‘Syndicate of the
Futurists’, amongst others. Various literary styles, which shifted and developed,
from futurism, expressionism and Dadaism to Zaum or transrational poetry were
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